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Since long I have this game idea posted around, including some concept arts and various race designs. The Cheetaan Legacy. It is meant to be a sci-fi fantasy retro style game, of which I have masses of story and design material, but practically nothing worthwhile yet. An other thing I had since long in the making is RRPGE. It is not a coincidence of interests, it is a plan, which hopefully can start unfolding from now.

Title screen plan for the Cheetaan Legacy game. It might need some color adjustments (There is a dark red color which might be invisible on some displays) which I might do at a later time editing this graphics further. The problem is mainly that my monitor has a really weird color space at darker color levels.

Cheetaan Legacy was not only in the making by concept designs and ideas, exploratory material was also coded for it years before. A lot. The problem always was that I always knew to build this game the way I like, to get it to the overall design quality I always aimed for, that would need massive amounts of time. Maybe even a decade from beginning actually composing the game to finishing it the right way.

Meanwhile technology is always changing. I had seen many new versions of Windows continuously breaking software for earlier versions, changing interface requirements, user interface design changes with the advent of tablets and smartphones, also having new systems once again, making it more and more a nightmare just to pull along old tools and software. If I need to get my ideas composed right in Cheetaan Legacy, I cant afford ventures in trashing, redesigning, and starting over various components falling apart as technology advances instead of focusing on design. After all I want a bloody retro style game, and no matter where these craploads of technologies develop, it is supposed to look and feel just the same. Then why it's software base can't stay put, being the same?

Long time back I started focusing on emulators, those of more common systems which likely stay. Since Cheetaan Legacy needs "considerable" processing power as I imagine it, it can't be made working on old 8 bit machines. Any traditional early 90's game console is also out of question since those are mostly restricted legally in one or another way. With them I might end up designing a game for a decade which then nobody will be able to play without going in the grey zone. So practically only x86 and DOS remained, relying on the very well designed DOSBox emulator.

But that system is a real nightmare to program for. I designed several things for Cheetaan Legacy, but always felt very bound to that system, and it made me uneasy to know how massive emulation infrastructure is necessary to make things going. The whole system (not DOSBox, the x86 system) is a massive heap of quirks and patches over patches, it is simply stupid to work in 16 bit mode when there is no 16 bit processor which would be capable to run what I design anyway (the early plans for Cheetaan Legacy aimed for about 30MHz 3.86: software-rendering most graphics is simply intensive, and required that). Getting the 32 bit mode work and keeping it in operation is a nightmare of it's own.

Retro Revolution Project Game Engine, a new console reviving the past. As well as it's original concept I designed it's logo too. Note that it is a registered trademark (registration pending when I posted this)!

This system is truly designed for a purpose: to make everything possible what I wanted to get into Cheetaan Legacy, at the minimal level necessary to get all these without major compromises.

The design of RRPGE is so that it tries to work itself around the problems outlined above. It accomplishes this by defining a system which is possible to realize largely without any reliance on any host system, and strictly separating a very thin interface to the actual host system, so making porting as simple as reasonably possible.

With this in place, knowing it's composition down to the core, having the system as simple as possible to accomplish the task (and any general retro-style game's requirements in this era), I can finally go into actually designing Cheetaan Legacy. It will take ten years? Then it will take ten years. All of it's code will be RRPGE, so no problem, no need to touch it because someone thought how spiffy would be driving IT technology this or that way needing the redesign of every god-damned software to be compatible.

Simplicity and stability, that's the key to get these long lasting projects properly designed and completed.

An image from (or for) the planned game Cheetaan Legacy, portraying one of the races (Shiriat / Cyat) at one of their typical environments. The image itself is not bad, but a little sloppy. For one it is that for a comment from a friend I started to study a little more how railway equipment looks from different angles, and I got the bogies wrong, just too flat. The other part is that probably I could do much better now at the portraits. So this is rather just an experiment which in this form will never make into the game (If ever).

A while ago Cheetaan Legacy was planned for VGA's 16 colour mode, in a tweaked 512x386 mode. I simply like the constraint of 16 colours, and the "high" resolution VGA's 4 bit modes offered. In RRPGE of course the game will work in 640x400, 16 colours.

I don't except starting on Cheetaan Legacy in the next year, though. RRPGE has it's own matters to settle. If I invented this system, I got to the conclusion that the same way it could help others in getting massive artistic games done at whatever slow pace they can get it done. Relying on the stability of the system, they can except it to be there and work just right once they get it done no matter how long it takes. But to get there, some popularity for RRPGE has to be established, and that only works by getting smaller demonstrative things done first, and maybe some tools to ease work with the system.

As a side-trip I hoped demosceners would pick this thing up to get this part accomplished faster, but apparently they have no such concerns like I have with Cheetaan Legacy, and are not interested at all in doing anything with a new system, so these are all left to me.

All in all, if I live, and keep having access to information technology and the Internet, this will go on. Although slowly, but Cheetaan Legacy will also take up from now, well, truly even right now as I write this. The generic graphics engines I currently design within RRPGE are of course meant to be reused later in that game too, so truly at last I can say I actually started building the software part of the game!

So risky, but hopefully it will be done one day!

Referred artworks

Title screen plan for the Cheetaan Legacy game. It might need some color adjustments (There is a dark red color which might be invisible on some displays) which I might do at a later time editing this graphics further. The problem is mainly that my monitor has a really weird color space at darker color levels.

An image from (or for) the planned game Cheetaan Legacy, portraying one of the races (Shiriat / Cyat) at one of their typical environments. The image itself is not bad, but a little sloppy. For one it is that for a comment from a friend I started to study a little more how railway equipment looks from different angles, and I got the bogies wrong, just too flat. The other part is that probably I could do much better now at the portraits. So this is rather just an experiment which in this form will never make into the game (If ever).

Retro Revolution Project Game Engine, a new console reviving the past. As well as it's original concept I designed it's logo too. Note that it is a registered trademark (registration pending when I posted this)!

Twenty-six forty-eight... Space is opened wide, our ships reach towards planets of distant solar systems, man is colonizing near and far. The same time Earth is struggling by overpopulation, severe social, political and economic problems. Many who can afford, embark on the journey, a perilous journey towards the unknown... A sci-fi novel set in the distant future, telling the story of a young man, who tries to find his place in this strange new world (currently Hungarian only).

An old (2006) implementation of the logic game Kye playing the original 15 levels for Linux & Windows. It gives an unique look and feel with a little different probably more intuitive mechanic while still giving the same old game with all of it's components. Source code is included. Requires at least a Pentium 200MHz machine for decent performance.

What happens when something gets me really inspired in the process... (Click the image to get it in 1920x1200) You could also check out the related article for the backgrounds and some research over airworthiness. Enjoy!

Portrait of a Shiriat from Cheetaan Legacy. Just some experiments with skull anatomy, fur texturing and such, and to make it simple, I tried a light source like if he was photographed with a flash, in front of a bland background.

Probably one of the most condensed scenery possible on the cheetaan homeworld before the wars. A huge gas-giant, exomoons, a gargantuan creature resembling a tiger, a cheetah riding a feathered wyvern over crystalline buildings scattered in a swamp, anything missing?

Tanis exploring some burnt down ruins. They could be Tikireni and Xitka from New World 2648, blue eyes for a Xi are not common. The Xi is the dark wolf-like creature, the Nir is the cheetah. The background is an own photograph, taken of a small burnt-down and abandoned summerhouse.

The summer started with a beautiful passing storm at sunset at my location, a rare and amazing sight. As I realized what was going on, I rushed out quickly grabbing my old Olympus C2500L camera to witness and photograph this phenomenon...

Just having some fun with doodling. A Shiriat riding a Cyat, racing with a train. The species are from the Cheetaan Legacy universe. So I finally decided to stop being such a scrooge I am, and embarked on an adventure to get myself a digitizing pad.

The 15th March is special in Hungary, we would be celebrating the anniversary of an important uprising, one against the Hapsburg dynasty demanding more autonomy for our country within their empire. It was the pinnacle of the age of reformation, but one which later got usurped like all the other movements happening in that year. Then, today... It seems like people here lost all their sanity siding with an oppressive government and very few caring of any movement which tries any reformation.

This old panther-alike was intended to be the main character portrait of the game idea which later grew to be Cheetaan Legacy (Which is still in a galaxy far-far away...). Medicore color selection with rather medicore art quality, later I got to improve in both aspects.

Spinosaurus Aegyptiacus reconstruction (at least an attempt at it), as of 2015 knowledge: the Ibrahim et al. papers from 2014 and the later adjustments on the hindlimb size, discarding the quadrupedal stance. Fleshed out according to some own ideas as well as various existing knowledge on the animal.

This large digital image was drawn for more than two months until it was completed (Or better to say I thought there is no much to do with it any more). It is one of my better pieces although it suffers some coloring problems. The theme would be an abandoned city on Earth, with cheetaans wandering around seeking for the sunshine. This is a part of the "original" cheetaan story, that is the story of the first interstellar war between human and cheetaan.

Flight of a Dragon is a retro game for the Uzebox open source game console, a bit of 8 bit madness involving an ATMega 644 and a bit of electronics to get it producing a video signal and accepting input from an SNES controller. Thanks to emulation, you may also try it out within your browser!

Cheetaan city scene. Experimenting with foliage, and at last, some proper colouring. The Cheetaan (Tani), first time portrayed in a typical city setting of theirs. In the distance, the organic statue of the centre, a white arch of plant-sustained Mag-Lev track, with of course a lot of green, and the two Tani races who are primary builders of this civilization.

Flight of a Dragon is a retro style game for the Uzebox open source game console, a bit of 8 bit madness involving an ATMega 644 and a bit of electronics to get it producing a video signal and accepting input from an SNES controller. Now the game is complete so you can finally lead the dragon to his salvation! Thanks to emulation, you may also try it out within your browser!